Kalamazoo-made 'Heroes of Newerth' drawing huge online gaming crowd

Courtesy of S2 GamesMassive appeal: This is a screenshot from the online multiplayer action role playing game "Heroes of Newerth," which was made by S2 Games of Kalamazoo. The game, released in May, is getting 35,000 players per day worldwide.

KALAMAZOO —

Massive armies have launched from Kalamazoo to fight for honor and gold.

In other words, you pick your dude out of around 65 “heroes” (characters ranging from demonic to human to a burly panda bear), form a team of five heroes (each an online player), and go kick some other team’s butt and blowup their home base.

Each side gets hoards of “creeps,” little computer controlled warriors.

The more success a hero has, the more “gold” he gets, which can be used to buy better weapons, potions, spells, etc. “HoN” increases in complexity as players reach higher skill levels, S2 Games’ chief technology officer Shawn Tooley said.

It takes a bit of reflexive speed, but the winners are the masters of strategy, those who “know what your opponents are going to do,” Tooley said.

S2 Games is at the Kalamazoo Sportsplex (home of S2 Arena). A third of the company is located there, Tooley said. They handle the infrastructure “that actually runs the game — the servers, the websites, all the statistical stuff the game operates on,” Tooley said.

Game design and programming were handled by the California office.

But the actual game servers aren’t in Kalamazoo.

“There’s not a data center large enough for the type of things we do,” Tooley said. The “HoN” world lives on 300 servers scattered around the U.S., Japan and Europe.

It’s become a very big world. When “HoN” went into free open beta testing last year, players grew to around two million worldwide. After its official release in May players were charged $30 (a one-time cost, no subscriptions) for the game, and is averaging about 35,000 players online every day, Tooley said. So far, “we’ve sold enough copies to crack the top 100 PC game sales of all time.”

Courtesy of S2 GamesGaming gorilla: This is concept art of Kunas, one of the characters in "Heroes of Newerth."

Tooley wasn’t surprised by the success. “HoN” was inspired by a “Warcraft 3” mod, “Defense of the Ancients,” an online game hugely popular in Asia with an estimated 15 million players.

So far, “HoN” has 30 percent of its players in the U.S., and the majority are in Asia, Tooley said. The style of game is big in competitive gaming, so S2 is holding “HoN” online tournaments with prizes of up to $40,000.

“There’s quite a bit of money to be made for competitive players in this field,” he said.

One can watch previous matches at honcast.com, complete with sports announcers and color commentary.

It looks like it would take a lot of effort and time to win the big bucks. This writer got halfway through the tutorial, charging his human warrior at some blade-slinging, computer-controlled demon, and got slaughtered (or, in the game’s humorous term, “pwnd in the head”).

One has to learn that there is no dishonor in running back to your base’s healing pools, or letting your creep army fight for you. More work is needed if I expect other players to pick me for their team (memories of gym class baseball ...).

But out of its many users there must be a few noobs one can learn to fight with. So far, with tens of thousands of players online every day, “HoN” looks like the biggest game out of Kalamazoo.